


vespers

by parrishes



Series: the hours [3]
Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 02:39:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4546986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parrishes/pseuds/parrishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ethan, Vanessa, infant Claire, and the nuances of being a parent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	vespers

The London sky is gray, blank and heavy with the promise of snow; it appears darker than it should, during sunset. The month of January stretches ahead of Ethan, the entrance-gate to the rest of the year and the years to come, the flyleaf to a new volume in his life. He’s never been one for cliches, but it is astounding, really, how fast the time goes by. 

Grandage Place is quiet and unusually still in the winter twilight. The house is calm, placid, until a small shriek splits the air. It seems to shatter the tranquility of the house, and at the first note of noise he’s up from the couch and striding up the grandiose staircase to the room.  

It takes him all of twenty seconds - probably less - to arrive there. His daughter lies in her crib, having recently outgrown the sole cradle they found in the attic, coated in dust and spiderwebs with wooden slats delicately carved into twisting spools that look like licorice. Claire’s face is red, probably from the force of her squalling, which is surprising - she seems like a fairly quiet infant, as far as he can tell, although she’s only been on the earth for two months. The first few weeks have been difficult, but both he and Vanessa are used to being up at all hours of the day and night, and Claire is slowly slipping into the routine they’ve been trying to set. But, as evidenced by her little fit, it hasn’t taken  _just_  yet. 

He’s not ungrateful - just the opposite. If they had to pick a time to use their requisite store of luck, Ethan is glad it’s this time in their lives, that it’s now, because nothing is more important to him than his new family. They are self-made, small but close-knit - he’s never met anyone more loving than Vanessa, and he probably never will. 

A small hiccup brings him back to reality - Claire isn’t full-blown wailing anymore, but she is whimpering and tears still slide down her tiny cheeks. He wonders what’s the matter - her diaper is clean, she was fed about an hour and a half ago, Vanessa made sure to burp her before putting her down - so he reaches the conclusion that she just wants to be held. 

He doesn’t blame her. He sees the expected snow falling outside in the bitter cold, through the little crack in the drapes, and the sky is almost dark; it’s gray and dank and if there’s any kind of weather that warrants cuddling next to the fire, it’s this. 

He picks her up, delicately - he’s still not quite used to the level of gentleness needed to care for someone so frail. Claire is a healthy child, strong, but she’s incredibly breakable, and Ethan has never been comfortable with fragility. He was raised to live with an iron spine, to not show weakness, to believe that breakable things were _meant_ to be broken instead of protected. 

Claire is still making low baby-noises, feebly waving her small arms in the air. “Shh, shh, you’re all right,” he soothes, as he softly bounces from foot to foot. She quiets at the sound of his voice, relaxed by the repetitiveness of the rocking. When she’s no longer tearing up, he goes to the rocking chair sitting kitty-corner from the fireplace, and as he turns he sees Vanessa, leaning against the door frame. 

He should have known, but more importantly: after all the time they’ve spent living and loving together, how did he  _still_  not hear her walk in? The situation would be amusing if it weren’t so frustrating, because while Vanessa’s tread never makes a sound,  _he’s_  magnetically attracted to every creaky floorboard.

Funny, that. 

Ethan settles himself down into the rocking chair, and sets it gliding in an easy rhythm. He pushes every third beat, unintentionally mimicking the waltz that started them - he and Vanessa - moving together. Vanessa comes over, footsteps still more ghostly than anything, and strokes the back of his head. He leans back into her touch automatically, closes his eyes before he realizes he’s doing it - not that it really matters. It's an observation, a self-study, more than anything else. 

He stares at the inside of his eyelids, sees red and faint, flickering shadows. “When did you get here?”

He can feel, rather than see, her smile. “About five seconds after you did. I was tending the plants.” 

Yes, her small window boxes full of herbs. He knows Vanessa aches, deep down, to return to the moors and the simplicity of life there; knows this because he feels it himself, the desire to go back to the place where they were at their happiest, although he doesn’t think he can be any happier than he is right now. 

“You mean to tell me you were standing there for… however long it was, and I didn’t notice anything?”

“Yes. Embarrassing, isn’t it?” 

He cracks open one eye to glare at her over Claire’s tiny head, nestled against his chest, warmed by his woolen sweater. 

Vanessa’s chuckle is more of an exhale than an actual laugh, breathed out into the snapping of the burning logs, and soon gone. She makes a pale, almost eerie figure with her white skin and nightdress so at odds with her loose black hair, but the smile in her eyes is warm. 

“I take it she just wanted some company, then.” 

Ethan tilts his head down, regards Claire’s chubby hands tightly gripping whatever fabric she can reach, looks at the thick mass of dark hair she didn’t lose after birth. She’s been lulled back to sleep for now, but he’s worried that if he sets her back in her crib she’ll cry again and he’s gotten quite fond of the near-silence that comes when he holds her - but that’s an added benefit; an excuse, really. He just likes to hold her. 

“I think so,” he whispers, still staring down at his daughter. When he glances back up Vanessa has an unreadable, far-away expression stretched taut over her face, like she’s worried everything is about to disappear. He shifts Claire to his other arm and makes sure she’s secure, before he takes Vanessa’s hand in his own and squeezes it, gently. 

He jolts her out of her thoughts but she doesn’t say anything, just looks at him with her steady gaze, searching his face for… he doesn’t know what for. He doesn’t say anything but he nods at her, giving her reassurance as a shield against some unknown fear. Vanessa nods in return, smile back in place. She squeezes his hand once, twice, and Ethan is briefly overwhelmed by the amount of  _contentedness_ he feels in that moment. 

He glances back at Vanessa, at the sight of her hand in his, before he realizes she isn’t wearing anything on her feet. 

“Aren’t your feet cold?” he asks her - although the fires are going, the floors are still chilly. Even he’s wearing a spectacularly ugly, thick pair of knitted socks. 

“I didn’t notice before, but now that you’ve brought it up…”  

He’s out of the chair before she’s finished speaking, Claire in one arm and her hand in the other. He takes care not to jostle the baby too much, not when she’s finally asleep. Vanessa draws closer to his shoulder, uses her free hand to stroke Claire’s face with cautious fingertips, breathes in the fresh smell from the top of her head.

He leads her out of the room, hands still clasped, and down the stairs to the parlor. They’ll sit on the sofa by the fire, Vanessa will put her cold feet up on the table the way she does when no one else is around, and they’ll talk together the way they do while their daughter sleeps. 

The warmth is already starting to seep in. 

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, you do not know how hard it was for me to not make this into a Penny Dreadful/James Bond AU crossover fic! I also want to explain that, before the 2x10 vision/reveal/moment of my death, I was making up a ton of Claire Chandler headcanons and none of them involved her having a sibling, which is why Charles doesn’t exist here. I don’t dislike Charles, it’s just that I’m not as… familiar with him as I am with Claire, even though she’s an infant here.
> 
> Also, I refuse to spell Claire’s name without the “I”. I don’t give a shit what IMDB says - I heartily dislike the insinuation that Vanessa and Ethan chose to name their dream-child after Actual Fedora Poster Boy John Clare instead of Vanessa’s dead mother, with whom she never got to reconcile, but maybe I’m just bitter.


End file.
